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Foucault and the study ofreligion in a postcolonial

ageRichard King

ab

aProfessor of Asian Philosophy and Comparative

Religion , University of Derbyb

Religious Studies , University of Derby , Derby,DE3 5GX, UK E-mail:

Published online: 30 May 2008.

To cite this article:Richard King (2001) Foucault and the study of religion in a

postcolonial age, Culture and Religion: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 2:1, 113-120,

DOI: 10.1080/01438300108567167

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Review Symposium

CultureandReligion 2 1),2001

Foucault

and the

study

of

religion

in a

post colonial

age

Richard ing

University

of

Derby

UK

Thesetwobooks constituteamajor step forward in thestudyofFoucaultand in

the relevance

of his

ideas

for the

study

of

religions.

The

first book,

Religion

and Culture is an

edited collection

of

Fo uca ult's w ritings exploring religious

(mainly Christian) themesandissues presentin theworkofthe French historian

of ideas Michel Foucault. Aswell as editing this collection and providing an

insightful

and

useful introduction

to

Foucault

for

scholars

of

religion

in

this

book, Dr Carrette also offers us an excellent study of the religious sub-text

underpinning much of Foucault's writing in his own work Foucault

and

Religion.

There

are

many themes that

one

could explore

and

discuss

in

relation

to

these

two books.

One

could look,

for

instance,

at

Foucault's conception

of and

attitude towards western Christianity, at the implications of his post-

structuralist orientation and its emphasison theelision ofpouvoir and savoir

(power

and

knowledge). Again,

one

might examine

the

exploration

of

constructions ofsexuality andidentity in relation to traditional religious and

modern secular epistemesasthesearerepresented in Foucault's body ofworks.

Alternatively,

one

could dwell upon what

Dr

Carrette calls Foucault's 'corporal

spirituality'that

is his

radically immanent approach

to

'spiritual' praxis. This

orientation emphasises embodiment in direct contrast to the body-soul

dichotomies

of

western Christianity.

Or

again

we

could examine

the

more overt

'political spirituality' which Carrette argues

can be

found

in

Foucault's later

(thatis post-1976) work.

Allofthese themes merit further attention. H owever, in this paperIwish to

take

a

slightly different approach

to the

material under review.

Dr

Carrette very

ably examines

the

religious,

one

might even

say

theological, fragments within

Foucault 's

own

writings.

In so

doing

he

draws attention

to the

debate

and

movement beyond Christianity that

is

embedded

in

Fou cault's work.

One of the

great benefits

of

Carrette's approach

to

Foucault

is

that

he

holds onto

the

unresolved tensions in Foucault's writing andrefuses the rationalist desire for

closure (Carrette 2000:151).

As

Carrette would acknowledge, there

are

many

different,

if

overlapping, Michel Foucaults,

and I

would

not be

surprised

if the

spirit of Foucault were hovering in a corner somewhere laughing at scholarly

attemptstopigeonholehim.

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In his own study of Foucault, Carrette focuses upon two conceptual themes

in his analysisthe emphasis upon what he calls 'corporal spirituality' in the

early works of Foucault and the shift from 1976 onwards to a concern with

'political spirituality'. The former denotes a non-dualistic rejection of the binary

opposition of spirit and body in favour of a this-worldly, embodied and

radically im manen t approach to questions of spiritual practice and the leading of

an authentic lifestyle after the 'death of God' (see Carrette 2000:4-5 129, 139,

etc.). In Foucault's later works, according to Carrette, there is a shift towards a

'political spirituality', that is a more concerted interest in the political

dimensions of religious and spiritual practice. This shift also leads to a

problematisation of the spiritual in terms of the notion of governmentality and a

sharper awareness of the socio-political factors involved in the construction of

the subject (Carrette 2000:131, 137-8). According to Carrette:

Foucault's 'spiritual corporality' and 'political spirituality' is a fusion of

terms,

a 'messing up' of the binary categories of the 'spiritual' and the

material, and, more specifically for Foucault, of the Christian order of

things. Such a reordering transforms the entire field of religion into an

immanent process of 'governmentality'... Foucault 'problematises'

religious language and experience in such a way as to make the body and

the politics of the subject unavoidable issues in religious discourse.

(Carrette 2000:139)

Carrette uses these two notions as hermeneutic tools allowing him to 'gather up

the fragments' of Foucault's thinking about religion, that is as an analytic

strategy for reading the 'religious sub-text' of Foucault's various works (Carrette

2000:143-4). This is an original and highly stimulating approach and works

well in drawing out not only the ambiguities in Foucault's understanding of

religion, but also in highlighting aspects and themes in Foucault's work which

might usefully be built upon or critiqued by more specialist scholars of

religion. As a specialist in Asian systems of thought I cannot help wondering

what an engaged and thoroughgoing analysis of non-dualistic philosophies from

the Hindu, Buddhist, and Daoist traditions might add to such debates. In the

attempt to find models of spiritual praxis that focus upon radical immanence

and a rejection of binary oppositions such as 'spirit' and 'matter' there is much

to be said for examining traditions such as Advaita Vedanta, Mahayana

Buddhism, and Daoism. Perhaps this is one of the reasons why Foucault had

such an abiding personal interest in the Japanese traditions of Zen, for who

better to consider as a theorist of radical immanence than Dogen for instance?

An analysis of such traditions will soon demonstrate, however, that even

explicitly non-dualistic philosophies have continued in practice to construct

binary oppositions and hierarchies of value as well as regimes for the

governance of the self and the body. Nevertheless, there remains much work to

be done in exploring such issues. Notable in this regard has been the work of

Bernard Faure on the rhetoric of the Ch'an and Zen trad itions (see Faure 19 91,

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Richard King

1997) and most recently, in

The Red Thread

(Faure 1998)an exploration of

Buddhist approaches to sexuality which has more than a passing indebtedness

to the work of Fou cault.

In this paper I wish to explore a different sub-text or thread that can be drawn

from the works of Foucault, one that is mentioned in passing by Carrette but

never really explored. That is the sense in which Foucault as a late twentieth

century European thinker clears a space for a move beyond the horizons of

western Christian intellectual thought. As Carrette notes, with a few notable

exceptions such as a very brief discussion of Zen Buddhism, and his interests in

the Iranian revolution, there is a general slippage in Foucault's thinking between

the category of religion in general and western Christianity in particular

(Carrette 2000:141,144-5). Despite this lacuna, Foucault has become one of the

central influences in contemporary post-colonial think ing and is now beginn ing

to make an impact in the comparative study of religion. If Edward Said can be

described as the father of post-colonial discourse analysis, then Foucault must

surely be one of its grandfathers How can this be and wh at migh t Foucault

offer to those scholars of religion interested in post-colonial issues and the

politics of cross-cultural analysis?

In a narrowly institutional sense, Michel Foucault was not a scholar of

religion, a specialist in non-western philosophies, nor a post-colonial theorist.

Nevertheless, his work has implications that are relevant to each of these fields.

In a 1978 interview with a Zen roshi in Japan, contained in Dr Carrette's edited

collection of writings by Foucault on

Religion and Culture

(1999), Foucault

was asked if Eastern philosophies might provide answers to the contemporary

crisis of Western thought. Foucault's reply is interesting, precisely because it

opens up avenues of exploration that he himself did not follow. He remarks:

It is true European thought finds itself at a turning point. This turning

point, on an historical scale, is nothing other than the end of imperialism.

The crisis of W estern thoug ht is identical to the end o f imperialism [and]

has produced no supreme philosopher who excels in signifying that

crisis...

For it is the end of the era of W estern ph ilosophy. Th us, if

philosophy of the future exists, it must be born outside of Europe or

equally born in consequence of meetings and impacts between Europe and

non-Europe. (Carrette 1999:113)

Fou cault's kn owledge of Asian religions and philosophies was rather limited, as

his discussion of Zen Buddhism in this short interview demonstrates. However,

he retained a personal interest in such matters and w as deeply influenced in his

understanding of the nature of discourse by his friend and mentor, the French

Orientalist Georges Dumezil. This is an intellectual debt that has yet to be fully

explored by scholars of Foucault's life and work (see Carrette 1999:38,n.l76).

Dr Carrette has highlighted rather well some of the challenges and

continuities found in Foucault's writings with regard to the legacy of western

Christianity in modern European culture. In a 1976 interview, Foucault

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described his project as an 'ethnology of the culture to which we belong'

(Carrette 1999:91). In highlighting the socially constructed and historically

specific nature of epistemes and regimes of knowledge, Foucault is a prime

example of an anthropologist of the west. One of the challenges offered by

Foucault to later generations of scholars is to continue the radical questioning of

the limits and apparent normativity of modern western thought, that is, to

reverse the anthropological gaze, which until recent times has generally served

to demonstrate the 'otherness' of non-western cultures. What Foucault

highlights is the particularity or exoticism of modern western culture. This is

one way of demonstrating, if you like, the provinciality of European modes of

thought. Part of this ongoing project is to draw attention to the role played by

European colonial expansion in the production of the myth of European

universalism that came out of the Enlightenment. As the subalternist historian

Dipesh Chakrabarty notes,

For the point is not that Enlightenment rationalism is always

unreasonable in itself but rather a matter of documenting how[that is]

through what historical processits 'reason', which was not always

self-

evident to everyone, has been made to look 'obvious' far beyond the

ground where it originated. If a language, as has been said, is but a dialect

backed up by an army, the same could be said of the narratives of

'modernity' that, almost universally today, point to a certain 'Europe' as

the primary habitus of the modern. (Chakrabarty 1992:20-21)

One of the strengths of Carrette's own analysis of Foucault's writings is the

refusal to opt for closure in terms of a homogeneous account of Foucault's

intellectual thought processes. What Carrette allows us to appreciate quite well I

think is thestrategic nature of Foucault's writings. Foucault provides us with a

lens for examining a particular dimension of the socio-cultural dynamic and I

am heartened to see that Dr Carrette agrees with me in rejecting a reading of

Foucault which sees him as suggesting that we should simplistically reduce

everything to power relations (Carrette 2000:149). As I have argued in my own

recent work (King 1999:207-9), such an attempt to discipline Foucault's work

is a move that is not easily rendered compatible with his own Nietzschean style

perspectivism of 'doing philosophy with a hammer'. For Foucault the role of

the intellectual is to problematise the 'normative' by focusing attention upon

the ways in which 'received wisdom' legitimates the authority of some and

silences others. However, it is precisely this challenge that F oucault offers that

must be applied critically by scholars and returned back to Foucault himself. As

Dr Carrette reminds us, after Foucault there is a need to go beyond Foucault

(Carrette 2000:145). Indeed, as I wish to argue, the social constructivist

position advocated by Foucault and his role as an 'ethnologist' of the west,

necessitates a further move, namely, the shift to cross-cultural or comparative

analysis and a renewed concern with the politics of colonialism and interaction

between cultures. This, I would contend, is one reason why Foucault is both an

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Richard King

inspiration and a problem for post-colonial theorists and comparativists. On the

one hand he opens up a space for the recognition of the particularity of western

culture as well as providing conceptual tools and strategies for highlighting

subjugated knowledges. On the other hand however, Foucault's overall project

remains firmly embedded in modern western intellectual culture.

Foucault and postcolonial criticism

Much of contemporary 'post-colonial theory' since the 1980s reflects the

influence of European thinkers such as Gramsci, Foucault, Derrida and Bakhtin.

To some extent this reflects the specific though partial use of F oucauldian ideas

in Edward Said's groundbreaking critique of Orientalism (1978). This

intellectual debt however, begs a serious question. To what extent should a

post-colonial exploration of the histories and p hilosophies of non-western

remain indebted to European theorists and philosophies? Nicholas Dirks asks

us,

for instance,

What does it mean that Edward Said, or Ranajit Guha and the Subaltern

Studies collective of Indian historians, take the very same texts by

Gramsci, Foucault, or Williams as fundamental that are recited elsewhere

in the academy. We ignore at our peril the manifestations of the

postcolonial predicament in provincial universities in Asia and Africa

where these theorists would all signify elitist forms of exclusion, new

Western forms of domination. (Dirks 1992:12)

Doubts have been expressed for instance about the usefulness of Foucauldian

analysis for exploring the imperial space (Bhatnagar 1986; Sarkar 1994). Ann

Stoler argues for instance that

Europe's eighteenth- and nineteenth-century discourses on sexuality, like

other cultural, political, or economic assertions, cannot be charted in

Europe alone. In short-circuiting empire, Foucault's history of European

sexuality misses key sites in the production of that discourse, discounts

the practices that racialised bodies, and thus elides a field of knowledge

that provides the contrasts for what a 'healthy, vigorous, bourgeois body'

was all about. (Stoler 1995:7)

As with the work of feminists such as Lois McNay, Stoler's analysis offers us

the possibility of recapturing Foucault's work by interlacing his analysis of

European sexuality with a post-colonial emphasis upon the politics of

imperialism. Similarly, Foucault's challenge to his readers to use his works as

tools for their own problematising projects has been taken up by Lisa Lowe

(1991, Critical Terrains)

who uses Foucault's notion of

heterotopia

'the

spaces of otherness' to provide a challenge to th e totalisation of Orientalist

discourse in Edward Said's early work. Lowe displaces the emphasis upon

Orientalism as a self-contained set of power-relations by drawing attention to

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the involvement of class, race, nation, gender and sexuality as multiple axes of

domination that impinge upon as they are conditioned themselves by Orientalist

discourses.

The comparative study of religion

It is clear that when entering a cross-cultural, multi-religious and post-colonial

space, the study of religion as an academic enterprise is caught in the contested,

multicultural and agonistic space that has resulted from the end of European

imperialism. One challenge in this new context is to excavate the silences and

gaps that exist in the hegemonic discourses of the present. In what sense, for

instance, once one moves beyond the study of one religionwestern

Christianityto an examination of other religions and cultures should one

retain the same questions, categories and epistemic frameworks? Should a

comparative approach to th e study of religion re-think its fundamental

categories, aims and

modus operandP.

How far should scholars working in th is

area problematise the Eurocentricity of the history of religions as an intellectual

discipline? How far should scholars of African, Asian and so-called indigenous

religious traditions question the western theories and categories offered by the

Academy? Should we be looking to re-construct the study of religions from the

ground up in a multi-cultural or perhaps even an inter-cultural space? What

would be the conceptual building blocks of such a process? Foucault of course

did not ask these questions within the main body of his work. They are not,

one might say,

his

questions. However, in a 1967 interview, contained in Dr

Carrette's edited volume, Foucault is asked to comment upon the contemporary

western fascination with the East. Foucault remark s:

On the face of it, for the last one hundred and fifty years, since

Schopenhauer, say, we have been orientalising; in reality, it is precisely

because the w hole world is W esternizing that the West is becoming

relatively more permeable to Indian philosophy, to African art, to

Japanese painting , to Arabic mysticism . Hindu philosop hy, African art

acqu ire a consciousness o f self by virtue of those structures through which

Western civilization assimilates them. (Carrette 1999:90)

Following on from this, cross-cultural work in the fields of philosophy and

religion, if taken seriously, w ill inevitably call into question som e of the

Enlightenment assumptions that undergird current practices. As Raimundo

Pannikar has argued with regard to the practice of philosophy,

[CJrosscultural studies do not mean to study other cultures, but to let

other cultures impregnate the very study of the problem which by this

very fact has already been transformed. In this sense a cross-cultural

Philosophy does not study other philosophies but changes the very

perception of what philosophy is. (Pannikar 1992:236)

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Scholars of religion must m eet the sam e challenge in the twenty-first century.

How do we look to move beyond the colonialism of the recent past? The crisis

of western thought and the end of European imperialism heralded by Foucault

in his 1978 interview necessitates a sensitive and nuanced engagement with

non-western systems of thought. The question of what is to be jettisoned in this

process of course is still up for grabs. For Foucault the role of philosophy after

Nietzsche is to diagnose rather than to search for universal truths (Carrette

1999:91). Moreover, Foucault suggests the role of disciplines, such as

philosophy, as an autonomous and totalising regime of knowledge has come to

an end. The requirements of specialisation and the demise of the universal

scholar as grand legislator (Carrette 1999:114), means that philosophy today is

an activity that is increasingly practised in a variety of disciplinary fields

(Carrette 1999:96). Foucault's implications are clear: philosophy as the abstract

search for universal truths maintained its credibilityand the illusion of its

universality precisely because it was supported by the institutional structures

of western imperialism. The crisis of western thought then is a consequence of

the end of western imperialism. This realisation is one legacy of the challenge

that Foucault offers to philosophers and to the philosophy of religion in the

twenty-first centurythe challenge to 'think differently'. As Foucault remarked

in the second volume of his

History of Sexuality:

There are times in life when the question of know ing if one can think

differently than one thinks, and perceive differently than one sees, is

absolutely necessary if one is to go on looking and reflecting at all.

People will say, perhaps, that these games with oneself would be better

left backstage; or, at best, that they might properly form part of those

preliminary exercises that are forgotten once they have served their

purpose. But then, what is philosophy todayphilosophical activity, I

meanif it is not the critical work that thought brings to bear on itself?

In what does it consist, if not in the endeavour to know how and to what

extent it might be possible to think differently, instead of legitimating

what is already known? (Foucault 1992:8-9)'

ot s

1. My thanks to Krzy sztof Jozajtis for reading this pape r at the IAH R conference in

my absence.

References

Bhatnagar, Rashm i. 1986. 'Uses and Lim its of Fouc ault: a study of the theme of

origins in Edward Said's Orientalism', in

Social Scientist

16.7:3-22.

Chakrabarty, Dipesh. 1992. 'Postcoloniality and the artifice of history: who speaks

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for "Indian pasts"?' in

Representations

37 , Winter 1992:1-26.

Dirks, Nicho las. 1992. 'Intro du ctio n' to Colonialism and Culture, Ann Arbor,

Michigan University Press

Faure, Bernard. 1991.

The Rhetoric of Imm ediacy. A Cultural Critique of the

Chan/Zen Tradition, Princeton, Princeton University Press

. 1997. The Will to Orthodoxy. A Genealogy of Early Chan, translated by

Phyllis Brooks, Stanford, Stanford University Press

. 1998. The Red Thread Buddhist Approaches to Sexuality, Princeton,

Princeton University Press

Foucault, Michel. 1992.

The Use of Pleasure: The History of Sexuality,

vol 2,

Penguin.

King, Richard. 1999. Orientalism and Religion: Post-colonial Theory, India and

the M ystic East New York and London, Routledge

Lowe, Lisa. 1991.

Critical Terrains. French and British Orientalism,

Ithaca and

London, Cornell University Press

Pannikar, Raim undo . 1992. 'A Nonary of Priorities ' in

Revisioning Philosophy,

ed.

James Ogilvy. Albany, State University of New York, 235-46.

Said, Edward. 1978. Orientalism: Western Conceptions of the Orient. London,

Penguin (new edition 1991).

Sarkar, Sum it. 1994. 'O rientalism Re visited: Saidian frameworks in the writing of

modern Indian history', in

Oxford Literary Review

16:205-24

Stoler, Ann Laura. 1995. Race and the Education of Desire: Foucault s History of

Sexuality and the Colonial Order of Things,

London, Duke University Press

Richard King is Professor of Asian Ph ilosophy and Com parative Religion at the

University of Derby.

Richard King, Religious Studies, University of Derby, Derby. DE3 5GX, UK

Email:

[email protected]

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